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A couple of days ago I wrote about Jane Linfield who after the death of her first husband David Burtenshaw married my 3x great-uncle Edward Gasson.

Edward himself is already of interest to me because his birth in 1860 is one of the few clues to his father’s brief time serving in the Metropolitan Police.

His father Thomas Gasson (my 3x great-grandfather) served with the Metropolitan Police for a few years around 1860. I still don’t know the exact dates, but the family were up in Middlesex in the 1861 census and possibly were there for a couple of years either side of that date.

Apart from the 1861 census and the birth of Edward the only other possible bit of evidence I have is an entry in the Metropolitan Police Order Book for 1861 (TNA MEPO 7/22) which records that P.C. 265 Gasson was dismissed for being drunk on duty. I can’t say for certain that this is my Thomas Gasson, but the date would fit.

I am naturally interested in finding out more about Thomas, because someone serving in the Metropolitan Police makes a welcome change from the typical agricultural occupations of my ancestors.

I had hoped to be able to learn something more from Edward’s baptism record and perhaps one day I might, if I can ever find it. As more and more records are indexed and put online there is a chance that it might turn up eventually.

I have long known that Edward’s birth certificate could be a key piece of evidence, hopefully this would give me an address for Thomas and his wife Harriett. I am not quite sure where I might be able to go after that, but in this business every little piece of information helps.

It is for this reason that there has been an entry on my to-do list for several years, reminding me that I need to order a copy of Edward’s birth certificate. I think it might be about time I got my credit card out and ordered that certificate.

2 Responses to “Why Edward Gasson is also interesting”

I love certificates and would probably spend time getting everyone’s certs if I could afford it. I got in the habit when I ordered my Irish citizenship. I think maybe I like the sense of full circle you get. But a caveat is that most of mine have conflicting ages on them. I think that the birth would be the most reliable. The marriage ages can be altered for a number of reasons as well as the death one if people don’t actually know the person’s age. Sometimes the person didn’t know. I have a whole set of memoirs all based on a conflicting age for my gg grandgather . They say he was born in 1815 and he says on 2 censuses that he was born in 1821 ( by his age). Do you have other family who are following your journey?

I can’t remember who’s it was, but on one of the UK Who Do You Think You Are episodes, the celebrity had an ancestor who was in the Metropolitan Police who was also dismissed for being drunk on duty. At the time, beer was cleaner to drink than water. A lot of police officers were found in pubs getting drunk, it’s not as uncommon as you may think.